Beyoncé - Cowboy Carter

"Bodyguard" is the supermarket banger

ok i'm kind of excited

27 tracks!

Dolly ! Willie ! It’s a quite amazing album I’m not sure anyone else could have made… and yeah « bodyguard » is pretty cool, especially the bass line

I wonder why the « I » is doubled on almost all the titles but not all…

why is this 27 tracks

Many skits though

incredibly bland songwriting

the country angle seems to have been a bit oversold

A little bummed that Dolly & Willie are just on there for skits & not songs, but overall it's pretty great. The vinyl album cover is different, w/ her naked w/o a horse. I don't like it as much, but maybe it's just the special edition vinyl rollout & regular ones will appear later?

Haven't listened, but nice to see Tanner Adell pop up on the record. Her "Buckle Bunny" album last year was a lot of fun.

"Daughter" sports a remarkable chorus. "Ya Ya" the early standout. "Alligator Tears" too. "Bodyguard" and "Protector" are the same song.

Halfway through and my hot take is that this is not her country album, it's her Aphrodite's Child album. I'm half expecting her to cover Four Horsemen on this

I'm getting Beatles vibes, not just the blackbird cover, but the sitar in American Requiem & the yaya>oh Louisiana>Desert Eagle>Riverdance medley feeling kinda like side 2 of Abby road.

I wonder why the « I » is doubled on almost all the titles but not all…

― AlXTC from Paris, Friday, March 29, 2024 2:38 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think it's only not doubled in people's names (linda martell, willie nelson, etc.). beyonce is calling this "act ii" in a series of albums that started with renaissance

The guitar track on “Blackbird” is the original McCartney guitar performance from the Beatles song… that’s a flex of sorts!

tbh was left pretty cold by this on first listen, “riiverdance” was the first one to make me really perk up. prob bcuz it’s the one that most sounds like a beyonce album gesturing at country as opposed to the other way around

renaissance on first listen just fit like a glove, it was an uncanny and thrilling experience that this album cannot match. but maybe it will reveal itself with time…

I don't need to hear "Jolene" or "Blackbird" again for starters.

Xxxp, her sash in the aforementioned vinyl special edition cover says "act ii BEYINCE" instead of "COWBOY CARTER".

it's her Aphrodite's Child album

Rain and Alliigator Tears

i appreciate her dedication to delivering maximalist statements and that she doesn't take herself too seriously. "riiverdance," "aliigator tears" and "tyrant" are my keepers, "bodyguard" is a song i def won't hate hearing on the radio. the miley duet was way better than i expected! can definitely see this being mind-blowing for folks who don't know the 60s source material, and there are way more of those folks than you might think.

"riiverdance" could've pretty easily fit on renaissance, without much tweaking.

between the “show me love” interpolation/reference on act i and the “jolene” stuff here i’m choosing to believe that she is intentionally picking, like, the most emblematic song from each genre to put her stamp on. the other explanation — pure basicness — is not as fun to imagine

this album makes a lot more sense as a full listen in light of the fact that it was supposed to be released first. it certainly seems to glide into renaissance in a way that i think flatters the final handful of songs here. you start to move away from some of the more costume-y aspects of this album overall, tho “16 carriages” still kicks ass

An album made for nippers and conferences.

Tbh having the most unimaginative covers of such basic song selections is ruining the whole concept to me.

I will admit I’m more of a lukewarm observer of the majority of her imperial period than most, but the “jolene” cover is one of the most offensively tasteless things I’ve ever heard

Agreed. Feels like she’s trolling. I heard y’all like country, anyway here’s Jolene and Blackbird.

I dunno, she changed the lyrics to Jolene to make it more bad ass & her voice alone defies "basic" for me.

“bad ass” is certainly one way to describe it…

in light of the fact that it was supposed to be released first

What's the backstory on this? I checked the Wikipedia page, but don't see it mentioned in the "Background and development" section (which is more of an essay beginning with her birth in Houston).

https://i.imgur.com/E7lmvW9.png

XP & spaghettii is freakin' operatic. Seems like more like she's bent on destroying genre trappings than just trolling country to me.

“I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisianne (Don't try me).” seems pretty bad ass.

I think that was a mistake. She had the opportunity to elevate the song into a higher narrative and what she came up with was “don’t take my man Jolene, I’ll shoot you”

At least, it prompted Azealia Banks to write “who is this imaginary adversary that wants to hump on J in 2024?” which made me chuckle.

justice for dashjadoll: https://www.tiktok.com/@ytniyah/video/7338502576150875438

What's the backstory on this? I checked the Wikipedia page, but don't see it mentioned in the "Background and development" section (which is more of an essay beginning with her birth in Houston).

― let’s get intertwined (morrisp), Friday, March 29, 2024 12:51 PM (eight minutes ago)

i'm sorry i can't stop myself from saying this but... you do know how to use google right...

I do, many apologies for asking

"Jolene" was already bad-ass...

I read Parton say somewhere she wanted someone to do a Whitney Houston like take on Jolene

Didn't like Renaissance really but find this nicer and more intriguing. Maybe because, unlike house, I have only fleeting encounters with country music. Never enjoyed "Jolene" though. And I didn't get anything out of the occasional not-country songs (except "Ya Ya" - that's really good I think, even if I feel the obvious borrows may begin to irritate me).

I find it annoying Apple have spent decades refusing Beatles samples but they've seemingly let Beyonce sing over the entire original backing track of Blackbird. It's like when ABBA said yes to Madonna. Only the real important artists are good enough (or paying enough)? Idk

The Beytles

Never enjoyed "Jolene" though.

Did you think you could slide this sentence in and no one would notice?

"I Will Always Love You" on the other hand..

A straight cover of Blackbird by a black woman is an interesting response to the straight cover of Fast Car by a white man ruling the county charts last year.

Maybe if she'd covered a song by a male country artist from '80s. Like "Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc."

Well, Fast Car wasn't country either. It's like if a white dude in a cowboy hat can turn a black folksinger's song into a country hit by just singing and playing it the exact same way, why can't she do the same thing to macca's iconic folk song?

we'll see. I just can't see an R&B/Pop singer covering a Beatles song as a response to a Country artist covering an 80s Folk song.

Also: Beyonce doesn't have to respond to shit.

"Respond" wasn't the best word to use to make my point: this album is about deconstructing genre expectations, of race in country in particular as she's talked about leading up the the release. So if she's looking at Fast Car as the biggest song in country music as she's putting this album together, I would imagine that the fact that it was written by black female folk singer would play into her decision to take an iconic white male folksong, about black civil rights, no less and play it straight to see how country radio would react.

I like the album a lot, but the “Jolene” cover is a major misfire. The lyric change removes the almost supernatural sense of dread that makes the original so special.

I think what I'm getting stuck on is the fact that neither Beyonce nor the Beatles are Country artists, so why would a straight cover of a Beatles song, with no Country bells and whistles, be expected to do well on Country radio?

I dunno, why did Fast Car do so well last year? It sounds pretty similar to Blackbird to me.

It has drums for one things.

Also Electric guitar

i.e. Nashville session ninjas

Ok you got me. I don't listen to country radio and frequently talk out of my ass, but still, I'm fascinated by Beyonce's choices on this record & Blackbird & Jolene don't seem like necessarily bad choices to me.

I will listen some more but … on first pass this strikes me as, erm, well intentioned. A few plausible keepers but mostly kinda dull.

based on info that has leaked out from
some collaborators — and honestly based on what her collaborators have consistently said about her work process in the post-4 era — it seems like most if not all of this album finished like 3-5 years ago, i would caution against viewing any of the songs as responses to anything that happened in the last 1-2 years

black female pop artists having been releasing straight covers of Beatles songs for like 60 years, i have a hard time hearing B's "Blackbird" as some kind of boundary-smashing statement of intent. The version is good though, the underlying song is indestructible and her decision to play it straight works in her favor

otoh i agree that "Jolene" is embarrassing, it tops the list of songs that dont need to be badassified and the harder she tries the goofier she sounds

This version of Blackbird is straight up lifted from the Glee version which is kinda lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-cZ_ElJ1oA

My two cents from the hot press:
- Tends to be overloaded with crap (layers, ad libs), struggles to find its rhythm, compromises readability
- Bodyguard is a breath of fresh air
- Nobody needs a cover of Jolene and I'm already looking at the time

Covering Jolene feels like when Pat Boone did his heavy metal album and was like "What are the Heavy Metal songs? Crazy Train? Okay."

pat boone was ozzy's next door neighbor in the "the osbournes" era

I enjoyed this album but would be more tempted to listen to it all through again if they'd snipped a good twenty minutes from the second half

well intentioned. A few plausible keepers but mostly kinda dull.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, March 29, 2024 12:39 PM

her entire musical output summed up.

(no shade, just a very fair assessment imo)

i think the second half is the stronger half ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder why the « I » is doubled on almost all the titles but not all…

― AlXTC from Paris, Friday, March 29, 2024 2:38 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think it's only not doubled in people's names (linda martell, willie nelson, etc.). beyonce is calling this "act ii" in a series of albums that started with renaissance

it's everywhere the i is not next to another vowel

First Beyoncé album for which I have zero iinterest

based on info that has leaked out from
some collaborators — and honestly based on what her collaborators have consistently said about her work process in the post-4 era — it seems like most if not all of this album finished like 3-5 years ago, i would caution against viewing any of the songs as responses to anything that happened in the last 1-2 years

this is 100% correct and will be gleefully ignored by many

the tyranny of narrative

but I definitely associate this kind of "what does it all mean" ILM discussion with a "cultural moment" album that no one is particularly enthusiastic about, divining the artist's intentions substituting for talking about killer jawns

First Beyoncé album for which I have zero iinterest

this is basically how I feel about this - I will listen out of a sense of obligation around the ~cUlTuRaL cOnVeRsAtIoN~ but it's feeling like a chore before I get to it. Beyonce has made amazing music dealing with feminism, racial politics, and even though I didn't love the last album I was thrilled to see her explicitly celebrating queer minority subculture styles. What I've heard of this feels so uninteresting by comparison, even if I agree that there's an important conversation to be had about who is allowed to make and be successsful with this kind of music.

I’m actually sort of interested in hearing this just because… Beyoncé singing in a country styles sounds extremely badass to me… I have to get through some stacks first tho

also I'm going to keep rolling the "Charley Pride existed and was way more successful than people remember" boulder up the hill everytime this stuff comes up

Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934 – December 12, 2020) was an American singer, guitarist, and professional baseball player. His greatest musical success came in the early to mid-1970s, when he was the best-selling performer for RCA Records. During the peak years of his recording career (1966–1987), he had 52 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which made it to number one. He won the Entertainer of the Year award at the Country Music Association Awards in 1971 and was awarded a Grammy for "Best Country Vocal Performance, Male" in 1972.

I have to add of course that the UK relationship with country music is very different to the US culture around it

as in it ended in the 70s? chartwise at least

You clearly weren't in Scotland in the 80s & 90s

boxedjoy wasn't old enough either and he should be thankful that he didn't have to grow up with Thingummyjig stinking up Friday evenings in the 70s/80s

I guess the imperial era is ending but it was great while it lasted. speaking of glee I hope there isn't too much of it because there has been this undercurrent of cynicism for a while now (her entire career? temporarily muted to some extent around the the mid 10s)

I'm sorry for assuming england is britain again it's just how I was raised

She doesn't sing in a country style, though.

damn this is trash. wtf was she thinking w these covers

can’t handle how stomp clap hey texas holdem is

bodyguard is cool

I thought the beatles cover was good! nothing special or anything, she should just do a covers album that would be kind of cool. liked bodyguard too. singles are both fine too I think, 16 carriages is probably the best song here. probably impossible for a beyonce album to not be listenable but can’t imagine how it matters much beyond that. she has nothing to say. happens to the best of them!

we’ll always have b’day

idk "Daughter" keeps impressing me: as bare a confession as she'll allow ("If you cross me, I'm just like my father/I am colder than Titanic water"). Make sense that she's most human when she's least likable.

The weird thing abt this album for me so far is that for all the talk of authenticity, gatekeeping, etc, this feels more like a costume than anything. The choice of covers, the voicemails, the gestures, even the title conveys a kind of lackluster, showbiz-y, half-commitment to the bit: Cowboy Carter, barely a step away from like ...Goes Country or Sings the NOW Sounds of Nashville!. Like hey everyone, this year I'm a cowboy, see my new hat? I dont hate it, but its a certainly lot more workmanlike and uninteresting than I was expecting "Beyonce's country album" to be

I like how "Bodyguard" adeptly walks (swims? drives?) the line betwixt Yacht Rock and Moody-Midtempo AOR. It's like the perfect mashup of "Portable Radio", "Don't Talk To Strangers", and "He's So Shy"

the Blackbiird cover is as good as anything you'll hear in the acoustic guitar room at Guitar Center

I agree with OEO about the vibe of the overall level of investment here but I did hear plenty of good stuff that I think will hold up throughout the year even if this album doesn’t feel nearly as wholly satisfying as Renaissance. It is kinda funny if unsurprising that as this early stage I feel like 80% of the conversation about a 27 track album is focused on the admittedly puzzling Jolene cover.

Cowboy Carter, barely a step away from like ...Goes Country or Sings the NOW Sounds of Nashville!

would’ve been better if she’d gone all in like this. the self consciously deep/meta stuff like the spoken word/voiceover sample of someone philosophically musing about the meaning of “genre” 🙄

I mean this albums alright but it's no Big Tom and The Mainliners now, is it?

It's no Brendan Shine either

Do ye want yer old lobby washed down shaun carter

Brendan Shine was subverting notions of genre decades before Beyonce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnofM3VYQ-g

yesterday, I was with a longtime biz veteran, a publicist who was married to a big time rockcrit in the 80s and who reps for NPR, DORF matrix, "respectable" "real" music, Americana, like she LOVES rhiannon giddens, (I heard her soul pop single this past fall, and that sounded so studied and unnatural as to be indistinguishable from AI) and is unfamiliar with legit popular black music of the past 20 years as well as present day country music. She was gushing praise for this record (I like this person very much).

And as I'm listening to this record, it does seem possessed with a gravitas, as a BIG STATEMENT that would please rock fans who want a stuffy singer-songwriterly rock record concerned with big topics. I don't remember Lemonade or S/T being like that? I remember both being surprising and fun? I also do not see that the country radio establishment should at all be shamed for not wanting to play music from this record, as there is almost nothing here that has anything to do with country music as it presently stands.

Yeah the problem I think is that it's obviously not really her "country album," but it's not obvious what it is, even conceptually. Seems sort of halfway toward a lot of things.

Like the name Cowboy Carter and the attendant iconography was the thing that really got her attention and the rest is conceptual backfill.

unfortunately there's nothing as funny as "flannel" on here

I won't stand for any rhiannon giddens slander though I don't care how many npr liberals like her

she is great

It’s an album about awards shows.

That’s the only way I’ve been able to process the intrinsic corniness of this new Beyoncé album, “Cowboy Carter,” which, very much like the most punishing of Grammy nights, runs way too long, yet still finds time to involve Post Malone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2024/03/30/beyonce-cowboy-carter-review/

Much like the Superbowl as well

i don't dislike the album as much as richards does (tho i will probably not listen to the album in full ever again), but he's right that it's hand-holdy. in my experience, the people who've liked the album most are folks that didn't realize that "blackbiird" was a cover

Anyway Beyonce is definitely the same kind of zone as the guests on this album—Dolly and Willie—where she’s such an icon that the success or quality of each new album is kind of beside the point.

i kept thinking while trying to get through this album - i was defeated - that a nice 40 minute set of country duets with youngs and olds of c&w chestnuts would have been a lovely thing. corny and old-fashioned but red states and blue would have saluted its ease of use.

Keepers:

Levii's Jeans
Ya Ya
Daughter
Alligator Tears
Tyrant
II Hands II Heaven
16 Carriages

add riiverdance and bodyguard and remove levii's and that's basically my list

I haven’t listened to this yet but I can’t help but feel that anyone who is just now discovering corniness in Beyoncé’s music hasn’t really been paying attention to most of her career, which to my ears has entirely been about elevating corniness into an extremely appealing art form

where she’s such an icon that the success or quality of each new album is kind of beside the point.

It's kind of like a self-anointed imperial phase.

Like, to be really real, the biggest difference between “corniness” and “camp” is one is approved by The Gays(TM) and therefore okay for everyone to find cool

and, hey, even we gays disagree on what's camp.

willie nelson pretty consistently puts out good records

where she’s such an icon that the success or quality of each new album is kind of beside the point.
It's kind of like a self-anointed imperial phase.

When will it qualify for the new jersey thread?

Anyway came here to post this. CD fans need not be smug though as 4 tracks are missing from the CD too apparently

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68702870

Anyway Beyonce is definitely the same kind of zone as the guests on this album—Dolly and Willie—where she’s such an icon that the success or quality of each new album is kind of beside the point.

I think it's tempting to make this point given their ornamental appearances on the album but both Willie and Dolly had very regular release schedules. (Willie still does and puts out 1-2 albums a year--and I agree, they are good.). That was a symptom of the industry they entered into, of course--but what I mean to say is I agree the point of them reaching icon status and that their new albums are not events. On the other hand, I think every Beyonce album since 4 has been trying to one-up the previous one in terms of their capital-A Artistic Statements. I haven't spent a ton of time with CC, I will soon, but as a listener I find the self-seriousness of each new project tiring and overshadow the music.

i kept thinking while trying to get through this album - i was defeated - that a nice 40 minute set of country duets with youngs and olds of c&w chestnuts would have been a lovely thing. corny and old-fashioned but red states and blue would have saluted its ease of use.

― scott seward,

Yes, the blackbird and Jolene covers are disappointing because there’s so much well written country music she had to choose from.

Also I want a Bey/Miranda duet

Lee Ann Womack’s from Houston too!

for its flaws, i def don’t think cowboy carter is self-serious, or overly so

I am hoping for her to do Houston zydeco and southern soul on her next one

Before I listened I was waiting for some zydeco per the suggestion on wiki that there was some

this is more of a general comment on the discourse abt this album (not so much directed itt) but:

man i’m really looking forward to when ppl start discussing what this album actually IS and we move past the “i didnt get what i wanted for christmas” phase of conversation ie endless discussion of what it isn’t/what it is supposed to be/what Bey personally promised me she’d do with this album etc etc

I haven’t listened to this yet but I can’t help but feel that anyone who is just now discovering corniness in Beyoncé’s music hasn’t really been paying attention to most of her career, which to my ears has entirely been about elevating corniness into an extremely appealing art form

― Cemetry Gaetz (DJP), Sunday, March 31, 2024 7:55 AM

otm, this new album is just too bootylicious

Finally listening to this, on “Alligator Tears”

The performative cringing over “Jolene” is very cringey in and of itself given how the song itself turned out (ie it’s fine, no better and no worse)

This seems to be a very self-indulgent piece of work in that the normal hooks into a Beyoncé album don’t show up until “Spaghettii”. It feels very much like watching someone having fun rather than having fun yourself so far. I can see it growing on me but I don’t particularly want to throw myself into it the way I did with Renaissance (which isn’t a surprise, I’m not a huge fan of country/Americana/roots music)

I'm kinda with DJP here. Just finishing up a listen myself. Good, but maybe more admirable than anything else.

I would love it if this pushed more rnb artist to do a county album

Can i ask, do the people who don't like this album like her last one?

no.

I had time to listen to this today and I do think it’s good. The Country songs don’t rem8nd me of radio country so much as the more tasteful, not-quite-Americana music that country artists like Trisha Yearwood make after their radio run is over. It feels like Beyonce actually does have a feel for the genre.

I would love it if this pushed more rnb artist to do a county album

― Comfortably numbnuts (Heez),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ed01G6nrw

actually, this is better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8x2fyWldao

This album is way more rhythmically savvy and lyrically funnier and vocally superior to any Trisha Yearwood album imo.

Better not let Garth hear that

She's in Love with the Bey

I mean, come on, she even sings in a Black church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHU5y7EmhIE

The performative cringing over “Jolene” is very cringey in and of itself given how the song itself turned out (ie it’s fine, no better and no worse)

guess that’s sort of the thing about taste

poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn) at 4:51 31 Mar 24

This album is way more rhythmically savvy and lyrically funnier and vocally superior to any Trisha Yearwood album imo

high bar

Second day and “bodyguard” is still my favorite thing in here. Maybe I didn’t want a country album from her at all.

I never knew until this week that “Blackbird” was inspired by the Little Rock Nine,

which makes its inclusion make more sense.

https://i.imgur.com/YSIr1gD.jpeg

Kind of wish “desert eagle” was a whole song because it had the potential to be onenof the best songs in here… Is that Thundercat?

only listened a couple of times and feeling low excitement about spending more with it (Renaissance is much better imo)...but the main impression I get is that it's an exercise in expanding the definition of Beyoncé music. Beatles songs are Beyoncé music now, yacht rock is Beyoncé music, country is Beyoncé music. See also all the talking about "genre" and the Sly & the Family Stone bits.

Homecoming reminded me that Bey had an absolute shit-ton of bangers even though I thought her albums up until then had a decent share of duds. Renaissance changed that, to me it's head and shoulders above the rest of her catalogue. So far this one seems to be a retreat, and as long as it is, it's her spottiest since...Sasha Fierce?

Thanks Alfred. Been meaning to check out that k Michelle for awhile

The first 2/3rds of this album is basically Beyoncé doing a Hootie and the Blowfish impersonation and somehow making it work better than it has any right to work

I feel like the album is kind of hard to talk about coherently because it's not a very coherent album. It's neither classic nor dud (imo), which leaves it in that vast OK middle ground. We're talking about it now because it's the new Beyoncé album, but I'll be surprised if it's one that gets talked about much in the future beyond "remember when Beyoncé 'went country'?"

Anyway, in re the Rhiannon Giddens disses up above (unwarranted, I agree), I think she did a better model of what Beyoncé's ostensibly attempting here with the Carolina Chocolate Drops a dozen years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVIaiADsyYo

Rhiannon Giddens also had a podcast about Opera. I kind of chuckled when Beyoncé broke into an aria on one song.She’s swag Dracula-ing everything about Rhiannon!

That aria bit is on "daughter" right?I was wondering if she's ever sung like that before?

It instantly reminded me of this jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsPb2EVCLdg

opera + R&B

*lightly skimming thread*

in re the Rhiannon Giddens disses up above

hold up, the what?

OK it was just the one diss. Still!

Someone wanna recommend an album by her or the CCDs?

From a new podcast episode I was just listening to (that is not about this album or music at all, this is an aside about what the social media powered internet does to the very nature of *cultural time* itself):

“It already feels like Cowboy Carter’s been out for six weeks, right? The shit leaked, came out, had a masterpiece cycle, a blowback cycle, and now an explainer cycle, and it already feels like that record came out on Valentine’s Day or something.”

her jolene cover is a travesty. it sounds fine, but it completely misses the point of the original song.

Its the dumbest possible way to approach that song

"i raised that man, i raised his kids" is nauseating. jay z sucks.

did "imaginary players" blink out of existence or something?

Carolina Chocolate Drops: For their straight roots stuff, Genuine Negro Jig is great. Their last album as a band, Leaving Eden, is still pretty traditional but the evolutionary bridge to solo Rhiannon Giddens (and a bunch of stuff the other people in the band have done, too). In general I like her collaborative projects — like Our Native Daughters — more than her strictly solo stuff. She works really well in ensembles, and while she's a good songwriter I think she's an even better interpreter.

This was the Chocolate Drops' biggest "hit" — it got some radio play — and a staple of their live set, but also the only thing like it they did. I would have liked more, but I also respected their commitment to keeping Black string-band music alive, that's what they emphasized. (Also, they were one of the best live bands I've ever seen, just so great.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPl8qlKq41o

ok wow, that group rules

I have a special soft spot for them because their name is an homage to Knoxville's own Tennessee Chocolate Drops. (Terry Zwigoff's movie Louie Bluie is about one of the Tennessee Chocolate Drops.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxQjF3t8lic

This is pretty cool too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-yGWYH6IA

A Beyoncé album is never just an album. The statement that accompanied the imagery for “Cowboy Carter” was about cultural reclamation. There is a reference to the cold reception she got at the Country Music Association Awards, back in 2016, when she performed her song “Daddy Lessons,” supported by the then Dixie Chicks, well-known dissidents of the genre. (The band’s criticism of antebellum worship and white-male pontification extends even to themselves; some years ago, they dropped the “Dixie” from their name.) That performance, to me, is appealing exactly because of the tension, which was captured on camera: Beyoncé the siren, frustrated, bidding her audience to respond to her. The artist took justified offense to the idea that a Black woman could not lay claim to the most American genre. The slight inspired a years-long investigation of the blacked-out Black roots of country music. The Black fiddler gave the idea of syncopation to what would become the genre; the banjo’s origins lie in West Africa. All that research ended in a kind of playful rebuffing. “This ain’t a Country album,” the statement said. “This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”

“Cowboy Carter” is just that—for better and for worse. On the album, Beyoncé wants to make Beyoncé the synecdoche for an American. (A Texas girl sprung from an Alabama daddy and a Louisiana mama—she frequently invokes these home states, in her lyrics, as a shorthand for biography.) But the album highlights only the artist’s singularity, her distance not just from the American public but from the rest of the music industry. Beyoncé is no maverick isolationist, of course: she has an arranger’s genius for collaboration, bringing together a cadre of producers and songwriters—No I.D., Raphael Saadiq, Pharrell, and The-Dream, with the last being her musical soul mate—alongside newer, younger specialists, such as Ryan Beatty, Raye, and Mamii. They have bottled a century’s worth of music tradition into seventy-eight minutes. Beyoncé takes on the role of griot for this nation’s marginalized musical styles—roots music, the blues, zydeco, bluegrass, folk, honky-tonk—all of which she presents to us alchemized, and buffed to high sheen. The production is maximalist: vocal stacking as high as the Tower of Babel; the guitar slide that transports you, given to a player from Heaven or Hell; the whispered jam session; the vast reserve of treasure-hunt interpolations, made to submit to alternative keys; the single song as radio medley or tripartite suite; social criticism as interlude; expository lyricism. And her finest instrument, that voice, which knows no limit. All together, it’s a spectacle executed to wild perfection, so declarative and definitive that it forgets pathos, lacks the wisdom to grow still, to question.

thought doreen st felix nailed it in this essay

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-beyonce-ever-burn-down-the-barn

Thanks Tipsy! Btw do you have any connection to UT? One of my buddies is a history professor there

Sort of! I have good friends who are faculty in various departments, my wife did her master's there a few years ago, I find myself on campus every month or two for one reason or another. UT is a fairly ubiquitous presence here. I don't think I know anyone in the History department specifically.

a dissent from Yasmin Williams: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/apr/02/beyonce-version-of-country-cowboy-carter-yasmin-williams

Her attempts at country-style storytelling also miss the mark. 16 Carriages immediately reminded me of Merle Travis’s hit Sixteen Tons. They’re both autobiographical testimonies to hardship and sacrifice. Singing about his family’s life in the Kentucky coal mines, Merle sings, “I loaded 16 tons / What do you get? / Another day older and deeper in debt.” On 16 Carriages, Beyoncé sings about her young touring life with Destiny’s Child “on the back of the bus” in “a bunk with the band”.

oof -- I hadn't heard that lyric.

williams is great, glad they let her write that

Yeah, I just saw Yasmin Williams play the other week, she’s fantastic. And that piece makes some strong points imo.

Mike Duquette's piece on the album looking at it through the lens of physical format and wider trends is very crucial, I think.

https://duques-delight.ghost.io/musics-physical-crisis-is-taking-notes/

The Williams piece sums a lot of my thoughts up perfectly. Stuff like the AOTY line in particular is just a massive turnoff to me, and the “American Requiem” framing device diminishes the whole premise imo. The theme of elevating the history Black Americana music becomes inextricably bound up with redressing a personal slight at an awards show. “Hey - you cant do that to Beyonce! And I’ve got Rhiannon Giddens here to prove it!”

Not to keep coming back to “Jolene”, but its almost a perfect parody of what imo are Beyonce’s most unappealing instincts: “I want to do a cover of ‘Jolene’, but lets change it so that I dont have to reveal any vulnerability or lack of confidence, and also I’m prettier and tougher than Jolene, and shes a desperate loser whos utterly beneath me, and I’m torching her from my position as a queen who has it all. There, I fixed it!”

Someone whose brand is presenting as the best, most badass, most powerful, most wealthy, most untouchable person alive while also being openly driven by an obsession with perceived slights taking place in the most elite circles of global wealth and fame, which few of their fans could ever dream of relating to... for various reasons thats just not a vibe that I enjoy spending time with at this particular moment in American history. The message is essentially good, but she might be the wrong messenger.

thanks for sharing that Williams piece

most wealthy, most untouchable person alive while also being openly driven by an obsession with perceived slights

Michael Jordan in the Last Dance

and every billionaire

before first playing "16 carriages" i wondered if there'd be any connection to "sixteen tons" before realizing they have zero in common, fair point otherwise i guess

Yeah I agree I think the lack of vulnerability in her art makes me not connect with her as much as I’d like. There’s a barrier where every movement being so calculated is a turn off for me. It’s frustrating because she is obviously very talented and has all the resources to really do more genuine, mindblowing work, but I guess she’s at a level that she works more as a brand.

I still think there’s some great moments in here that hint at what could have been, but there’s also so many misses that it doesn’t work as a full picture to me.

How do you define "vulnerability" in a pop context, Moka? Beyonce's openness to erotic pleasure is by my lights an example of vulnerability. She's not a femmebot.

Also, many of my favorite bands and rappers project an attractive indomitability. I don't need vulnerability from every act I listen to.

'queen bey' and the over the top accolades for everything she does and the over the top reaction whenever she isn't given a grammy grate on me. but I think this album is exceptional and I was ready to write it off before listening to it. I could do without dolly and willie's interludes (i can almost always do without interludes on albums) but the songs on this are almost all awesome, Texas Holdem is probably the worst thing on it. I think calling this a country album is pretty disingenuous.

Is she using the McCartney guitar track from the white album or is it a perfect recreation?

I was listening to the new swamp Dogg bluegrass album and honestly I would love to hear Beyoncé sing there’s a mess up under that dress

It’s McCartney’s guitar track, I read somewhere.

yeah just read that here. I assumed it was, it would have been hard to absolutely re-create the string squeaks

It's been interesting to watch the reaction to this beyond the normal people-who-care-about-Beyonce-or-country-music realms. I'm not that excited by the album but I don't want to underestimate its odd cultural moment and impact. It's pretty specific to 2024 in a lot of ways, very much including its incoherences.

(even tho yes I know the songs were recorded years ago. they're arriving now.)

Swamp Dogg’s country album from 2020 Sorry You Couldn’t Make It is great, coincidentally also inspired by a CMA-related slight

How do you define "vulnerability" in a pop context, Moka? Beyonce's openness to erotic pleasure is by my lights an example of vulnerability. She's not a femmebot.

Also, many of my favorite bands and rappers project an attractive indomitability. I don't need vulnerability from every act I listen to.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

Shoot. Didn’t expect to be challenged and don’t know how to explain it properly lol.

I’ll instead direct to this Spectrum Pulse review:
( https://www.spectrum-pulse.ca/blog/album-review-cowboy-carter-by-beyonce ) that pretty much nails where I am with her and why albums like Renaissance and this one don’t work for me as a whole while albums like Lemonade and 4 feel more like my gear.

That's cool, I wasn't challenging you

I’m not asking something from her that doesn’t exist. Even in this record there’s moments and songs that are exactly what I want from her… then there’s things like the Jolene “cover” which is a huge miss for me.

There are, as explained in the review, two sides of Beyonce the “perfect queen diva” and the “deeply flawed humanity” side to her, I have almost no interest in the former.

Then there’s bops like Bodyguard and I’m always game for those.

y'all bummed me out and i'm going to listen to this later. hmph.

Sorry. Even if it’s very spotty it’s still one of the most interesting “event” pop albums I’ve heard in ages.

Most of the complaints in this thread is about Jolene tbh.

I like a lot: Daughter, Bodyguard, Ya Ya, Alligator Tears, II Hands II Heaven and 16 Carriages…

I’ll probably end up trimming and resequencing half of this album for subsequent listens thru the year and forget about the rest of it.

Ok, Alfred, so… Spotify artist shuffle just played me “all night” from Lemonade. So, I can’t define what vulnerability in pop context is for me but I’d say that this song sounds vulnerable to me.

I don’t really care about Beyonce and Jay Z’s private life… this is a song about forgiving those you love and it works for me even when removed from any personal context. It has a more universal and relatable thing going on. This is the sort of Beyonce song I do connect with and I guess I just wanted more of that side of her in here because it would’ve been a great match with the country angle.

I love "All Night"!

i gotta say i think the song w/ miley is amazing. even as someone who has loved a lot of miley music i rolled my eyes a bit at her being on this album but no this is the absolutely ideal use of her. that leathery, weathered quality to her vocals really pairs perfectly w/ this song about everlasting, expansive, speeding down the highway in a convertible kinda love. it's also the gayest song beyonce has ever recorded, like on a literal level? on first listen i just read it as a thelma & louise kinda thing but i can't hear it as anything other than a love song between two women, and i think prob one of her best love songs and ballads. i typically find her pretty saccharine in that mode (something like "1+1" being an exception) but i think she nailed this one

it reminds me a lot of "shallow" actually which is another piece of would be schlock balladry that is so expertly done that it ends up as just purely great

texas holdem is the worst song on this album by some margin, and primarily because of the millenial whoop hey bvox and handclaps which make it sound like the Lumineers or some shit.

As a poker player, based on what I see on Instagram stories I think there will be a lot of new players/rubes from that hit song.

Besides 16 carriages and texas hold em that were released previously the most streamed songs so far are the Miley collab (which isn’t surprising) and the Jolene cover. Miley collab and Bodyguard should be singles.

I get why Texas Hold Em is popular since it’s really catchy but yeah I think it’s one of the worst things in here and it does sounds like the fucking Lumineers.

it's also the gayest song beyonce has ever recorded, like on a literal level?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWpsOqh8q0M

(agree the miley song is a highlight)

texas hold em is catchy, but apart from it being only a mild improvement on the lumineers the lyrics are inane

can i tell you guys a secret?

beyonce being compared to the lumineers is incredibly congruent to how i've felt about her since the beginning. the way you guys cringe at the intentionally overbearing nature of everything about the stupid fucking corny ass lumineers perfectly articulates how i've always felt about beyonce. no malice, it's just music for a different audience.

xpost Also the first line negates the title. It's like "I ain't single. I ain't a lady."

the difference is that beyonce is usually good to listen to

Lumineers only have like one corny type of song tho, Beyonce knows how to be corny in different styles.

CRTL-F "New Jersey" not found

My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana
My album New Jersey

Sorry need to catch up on the posts in this thread but don't want to bias my thoughts. Will report back once I've read thru but...

I've listened to this album twice, and while I need more time to absorb it -- especially the second half -- my initial listens suggest this is the worst Beyonce album since B'Day, which is when I started really listening to her albums. Maybe my expectations were all wrong? I agree with a lot of what Yasmin Williams tweeted the day after the release and put in her Guardian essay, but mainly just wish the songs were a whole lot stronger! I wonder what this would have sounded like if she'd worked with actual country songwriters like Liz Rose, Luke Laird, Natalie Hemby, Brandy Clark, Chris Stapleton, Shane McAnally, etc. I see Cam got a songwriting credit on the opener but otherwise the vast majority of the personnel has little experience with the genre, and it just seems very at odds with the approach she took with Renaissance? I'm listening to Lemonade right now and every song and hook is so much stronger than the vast majority of Cowboy Carter. "Daddy Lessons" would be a highlight here!

Lemonade is her best album tho

Daddy Issues would have easily been a top 3 song in here. Hell maybe the best one.

The Miley song sounds like it's underwritten? idk it feels like it's missing a piece. A near triumph.

so is this her Young Americans

I don't know. Not one damn song made me break down and cry.

^^ such a wonderful person but ya got problems

i think one of the reasons why "II hands II heaven" really hits for me is that there is not a lot of subtext to beyoncé's music these days, very little mystery. each of the last two albums has been accompanied by mission statements laying out their inspirations and contexts both personally and culturally; downstream of this, whatever subtext may exist is excavated by critics, academics, twitter posters etc. the reviews of these albums are stuffed w/ references to the work of other artists, as are the albums themselves of course. this isn't a criticism necessarily, i think her revealing more of her personal history in reference to renaissance only deepened my appreciation of the album, and her ability to connect cultural/historical/sociological dots thru her music is pretty much bar none in pop music currently. i think it's all less successful on this album but whatever

all to say that to me the gay subtext of "II hands" gives it a certain frisson that is not really present on much of either album. very little is happening offscreen on these records, so to speak, but here it's all gestures and nods to hidden layers of a relationship, something understood only between the two characters in the song. doreen st felix's review calls the song "wholesome" which... idk! i don't get that personally, yet i can see reading the lyrics and feeling a lot is being left unsaid before it gets to... unwholesomeness. but to me that's what makes it stand out. i think it's a pretty steamy song bcuz of what the tone & texture of their vocals and interplay between them is suggesting but the lyrics aren't quite spelling out.

I'm not seeing what the big deal is about the changed lyrics to Jolene, though I've seen plenty of people shitting themselves in anger them (granted it was on the hoffman forums)

I don't mind that she rewrote the words, but I do mind that she made them worse and not in an interesting way.

here's someone explaining Blackbird to the guy who wrote it: https://imgur.com/gallery/1Gp5xia

lmao

Sorry Macca but Ebony and Ivory is about a piano

Regardless of Jolene lyrics being switched for the worse, I think both the Blackbird and Jolene covers are super boring choices to cover and the execution doesn’t do anything interesting either. Blackbird is pretty much a karaoke version… with a fucking great singer, yes.

I think Blackbird's lovely. It is weird as the second track though, it needs to be tucked in the middle somewhere.

I don't care about the lyrics in Jolene but the singing feels boring and rigid - there's no swing in it. I'm not that familiar with 2010s and 20s Beyonce but does she usually sound so over-formal?

Sonically I prefer "Blackbird" to "Jolene" -- it's an all-time beautiful song; personally I love that she used the original master recording and sang it straight. It sounds lovely.

But agree it doesn't "fit" sonically as the second track, and that's because I interpret its position on the record as an egregiously obvious and literal statement of intent, not one that was decided because it made sense in the sequencing as a listening experience. Here's a song called "Blackbird" where the lyrics literally say "Blackbird singing in the dead of night" and we'll feature a bunch of under-appreciated black female country singers! The whole album plays to me as a jumbled mess that's connected by a few very literal skits and ideas.

so a concept album basically

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